GENERAL VIEWS ON ARCHEOLOGY. 339 



day there was twenty-four hours long at the summer solstice. 1 Now, 

 they could not have failed to mention so important a fact as the em- 

 ployment of bronze, instead of iron, for arms and cutting instruments, 

 as they were enabled to describe, among other things, how grain was 

 thrashed in covered barns, on account of the rainy climate. 



Lastly, the Sagas and the most ancient traditions of the North all 

 refer to the age of iron and know nothing of an age of bronze. 2 



Ancient Civilization of the North. — The North, especially Denmark, 

 is rich in flint of a very fine quality, peculiarly adapted to be fashioned 

 by the simple action of cleavage. This facilitated the work extremely 

 and allowed instruments to be made of very considerable usefulness, 

 for flint is harder even than steel. 3 This very material circumstance 

 must have contributed, and perhaps very extensively, to bring about 

 a superior development of the primitive civilization in this country. 

 Thus some of the daggers of flint in one piece, and with ornamented 

 handles, which are found in Denmark, are the finest articles of the kind 

 that have been anywhere observed. 



The civilization of the age of bronze would appear also to have 

 reached its culminating point especially in the North, judging at least 

 from the contents of the museums. 



Finally, as to what regards the first age of iron, direct and indirect 

 archaeological data give us a glimpse of the fact, that the North had 

 at this epoch a considerably advanced civilization, entirely independent 

 of that of Rome. This was scarcely suspected generally, for the atten- 

 tion of the literary public had been so much absorbed by the Roman 

 element, that this had concealed, as it were with a veil, a whole ante- 

 terior growth which is just now beginning to show its outlines above 

 the horizon. 4 



It would seem that the shores of the Baltic, with their Danish archi- 

 pelago, the soil of which is so fertile, have furnished anciently a 

 center of civilization, like the countries of the Mediterranean with their 

 Greek archipelago. 



All this certainly does not tend to show that the knowledge of the 

 metals was late in arriving in the Scandinavian north. The aggregate 



1 Lelevel. Pytheas of Marseilles and the geography of his time. Brussels, 1836; German 

 edition. Hoffmann. Pytheas und die Geographie seiner Zeit. Leipzig, 1838. 



2 Munch. Die Nordisch-germanischen Volker. Lubeck, 1853; p. 7. 



5 If silex were not so liable to break, and had the tenacity of steel, it would be of superior 

 usefulness to the latter. 



4 At the present day the Scandinavian north can boast of an intellectual cultivation of 

 which there is but a very vague idea in the south. Here are some significant facts: Prof. 

 TJrsin published, some twenty years ago, at Copenhagen, a popular astronomy, for the Ice- 

 landic translation of which he had, in Iceland, 600 subscribers, among whom figure simple 

 farm servants of both sexes. In 1840 the reading of the Icelandic peasants consisted of a 

 new and quite good translation, not of the "Wandering Jew of Eugene Sue, but of Homer's 

 Odyssey. Prof. Berlin, of Lund, published, in 1852, on the natural sciences, a popular 

 treatise, of which 20,000 copies have been disposed of in Sweden, and 40,000 in Norway. 

 As for Denmark, its capital passes for the Athens of the North, as well in what concerns the 

 sciences as in what belongs to the scenic arts — music, painting, and especially sculpture. 

 The excellence of the Scandinavian character has been well understood by a Bernese of the 

 last generation. See the remarkable work.of Ch. V. de Bonstetten: The Southern Man and 

 the Northern Man. Second edition; Geneva, 1826. 



